by
Suzanne on
February 28th, 2012

To be perfectly honest with you, I would even post about this show if I didn't like a single artwork on display other than Fake Death Picture (The Death of Chatterton)(top) because channeling my favourite accidental (?) suicide painting of all time will always get you a mention on here.

For Addio del Passato, British-born Nigerian artist Yinka Shonibare has once again worked with his signature fabrics and created beautifully lavish costumes in bold colours and absolutely delectable opulent interiors achieving a gorgeous chiaroscuro of fabrics, textures and complexions so rich that you're almost forgetting you're actually looking at scenes of death. Well, at least a series of photographic re-enactments of famous death and suicide scenes of art history.

Overall, I will have to admit that I preferred the works from Yinka's Goya phase but you know me - I just like to complain.

by
Suzanne on
February 23rd, 2012

Ah, I missed the glorious opportunity to tie this post in with my recent article on Hisaji Hara - it would have been a very smooth and insightful transition as both Nazif and Hisaji sure are experts in the complex inner workings and psychopathologies of Balthusesque girlhood.

Nazif has a particularly great eye for all those (mind) games girls play and he uses the anachronistic form of the tableau vivant as his artistic modus operandi and way to study these games.

The details of the scenes are staggering too and always spot on: We see seductively parted lips, extruding collar bones, golden glowing skin - youth doesn't come much more beckoning than as it's captured in Nazif's work.

It's also fascinating to observe that his group scenes never seem staged, but narrated; his girls are never exposed but embedded; they are not vulnerable and exploited but self-conscious and very much in charge of the scene - in one sentence: They have definitely grown up.

In a way, it could be argued that Nazif is just as much a director or a choreographer as he is a photographer because getting these nuances right is something that has a lot to do with understanding every single bone and muscle of the body and face - and that's also precisely what gives his tableaux a very painterly, very warm, very intimate, very incarnate and very baroque atmosphere.

I know it's probably rather unlikely you are in the United Arab Emirates right now but if you ARE, do go check out his very comprehensive solo show at Green Art Gallery in Dubai until March 5. Details below.

However, Gisèle's Olimpias are a lot less grotesque and hyperreal than the Chapman's creations but more cracked and broken in their appearance and there's a subtle sense of mutilated and traumatised individuality in her adolescents' intimidated stares and serious outfits.

39 dolls will be on show as an installation accompanied by a beautifully shot photographic documentation of Gisèle's work with and on them.

Also on show will be Gisèle's and Dennis' newest theatrical piece which was produced in collaboration with Stephen O'Malley of SunnO))) fame (working on sound as well as wall drawing designs) entitled Last Spring: A Prequel(a trailer has not emerged yet, sadly, but will be added to this post later).

by
Suzanne on
February 21st, 2012

In my early childhood, when we visited the fairgrounds in late autumn with a bag of Marroni (roasted chestnuts) warming my little hands, my mum would always tell me about how, when she was my age, the Halbstarke("half-strongs"/"semi-toughs" - a movement both popularised and simplified by the movie Teenage Wolfpack) used to hang out near fairgrounds, looking intimidating, cool and... desirable.

Growing up in the 80s with unsightly skinny kids in stonewashed neon jeans and perms occupying fairgrounds, it always sounded like a completely different world to me and my imagination turned the Halbstarke into some half-men/half-wolves - pillaging and ravaging everything in their way that hasn't fainted with hysteria yet.

In my teens - after studying the not unsimilar life and career of Swiss photographer genius and car crash fetishist Arnold Odermatt - I came across the photographic work of self-taught photographer and previous factory worker Karlheinz Weinberger(1921 - 2006 - GIVE THE MAN A WIKI PAGE!) and it took another year or two to link the stories my mother had told me to the hauntingly powerful yet disarming Weinberger portraits and to realise that post-WWII Switzerland really wasn't just all quaint and perfect but riddled with very diverse youth movements creating their very own eclectic aesthetic. An aesthetic that would some decades later inspire and influence the Swiss punk, post-punk and goth movements.

Until mid-March, Galerie Esther Woederhoff in Paris is showing a vast selection of works by Weinberger in an exhibition entitled Rebels. They're absolutely incredible snapshots of an often forgotten youth movement - shot partially in Weinberger's own pretty bourgeois living room - putting them in the very same Bildungsbürgertum environment they wanted to liberate themselves from - or in the great outdoors snogging in forests, riding pimped bikes, displaying their DIY gear, and just generally being totally badass, fierce and very un-Swiss.

A motive that's particularly prevalent throughout Weinberger's work is the focus on the display of male genitalia. Halbstarke developed their very own style, distressing jeans by taking zips out, replacing them with bolts or string and therefore setting a very deliberate phallic accent to their attire. Having worked for "Der Kreis" (AGAIN, GIVE THEM A WIKI PAGE!), a homoerotic magazine published by a Zurich club of the same name that even dared to publish highly critical material during the Nazi era, Weinberger was well versed in an aesthetic celebrating the sensuous youthful male.

However, he documented the halbstarke females in an equally admiring way and his portraits of girls with outrageously backcombed hair, kohl cat eyes, animal print or boldly striped jumpers, very tight waistlines and a lot of chuzpe show a great amount of empathetic closeness to their cause. He was on their side without being one of them.

Analysing the stylistic elements that made you halbstark, it's actually very interesting observing how certain elements broke with gender stereotypes while others enforced them with a shitload of testosterone:

For the guys this meant that the Hollywood version of the quiff was often grown longer and softened to look rather effeminate, jeans and leather jackets were often short and revealing but this was then counterbalanced with the masculinity of scary Hell's Angelesque back patches and of course the infamous horseshoe used as pendant - which was like the heavyweight 50s grandfather of the safety pin/pentagram/ankh.

The girls too walked a dual path both enforcing and breaking visual gender roles being the hourglass femme fatale only to adapt to a very tomboyish look and borrowing their boyfriend's horseshoes, jackets and bandanas the next day.

It was a fantastic and great experimentation ground for the days to come and a lot of it has survived until today - particularly in the goth, crust punk and biker movements. A political movement or not, a lot of the Halbstarke later joined the youth revolts of the late 60s and they have changed the visual landscape of Switzerland for good. Thankfully.

by
Suzanne on
February 18th, 2012

A Study of "Because Cathy taught him what she learnt" by Hisaji Hara, 2010 - click to enlarge

I think it must have been the lovely Nana Rapeblossom who first introduced me to Hisaji Hara's work a few months back and I must admit that it comes as a bit of a surprise to see him showing at Michael Hoppen now.

Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against Hoppen as it's a fantastic gallery with superb curating and as a matter of fact, they're also hosting a marvellous Guy Bourdin show at Hoppen Contemporary right now - but it seems I had just subconsciously assumed that for his first solo show on European soil, he would choose a museum rather than gallery context given his penchant for highly composed arrangements and established European painters, especially (and obviously)Balthus.

A Study of "But it was one of their chief amusements to run away to the moors" by Hisaji Hara, 2010 - click to enlarge

There's softened spatial serenity, composed simplicity, powdered sexuality, layered architecture, and ahistorical frozen theatricality to his works which are all aspects that are becoming ever rarer in a contemporary photography landscape which often seems dominated by the ironic dirty scenester snapshot so it's a huge joy and inspiration to see such works being appreciated "over here". Definitely a must-see for all London folks.

by
Suzanne on
December 26th, 2011

To wrap up 2k11 on the Wurzelblog, I decided to post the 20 articles you guys liked best - according to likes, shares and reactions - and I must say, you've got a rather amazing and futureproof taste in the arts, people.

Many thanks for taking the time to submit stories, comment and interact in the past year(s).

(In order of popularity and ordered into rather random categories. Click on images to read stories.)

What's more is that the ICN staff was extremely sweet, helpful and very knowledgeable and I purchased an absolutely gorgeous and apparently out-of-print Ryo Arai monograph for as little as a handful of sushi.

"The photographic portraits featured in “Crowns and Gladiola” take as their inspiration the Yona Wallach poem, “Jonathan,” in which the author imagines herself a young boy being slain by other children wielding gladiola as swords.

Here, Iwajla Klinke’s fascination with human ritual – previously explored through portraits of young male subjects adorned in arcane religious cloths – is expanded to explore cultural practices situated even further from the center of mainstream Occidental discourse.

Idylls from Wallach’s poem are interpreted almost literally in portraits of fencers; a series of models bearing bridal crowns evoke a not-so-distant time when girls of a similar age had their futures determined for them through arranged marriage."

by
Suzanne on
October 20th, 2011

Nagi Noda, 1973 - 2008

Nagi Noda - the incredibly talented multi-genre artist, director, designer, fashion and hair visionary who died in the prime of her creative career three years ago is finally being honoured with a retrospective of her astonishingly diverse work in Tokyo, where she lived and worked.

by
Suzanne on
September 27th, 2011

From The Text Book (Chulsoo and Younghee) by Oh Sukkuhn - click to enlarge

In his first solo show in Tokyo, South Korea-born, Nottingham-educated artist Oh Sukkuhn(Suk Kuhn Oh) is currently presenting his Text Book series at Base Gallery.

The Text Book looks all kawaii but reveals way darker, more historically complex and socially traumatic layers upon further inspection - lessons from Korea's turbulent past and possibly even memories of Oh Sukkuhn's own time as a photographer in the South Korean army.

The series is inspired by a boy named “Chulsoo” and a girl named “Younghee” - two Korean textbook characters from the Park Chung-hee era that have survived through the mid-90s.

"By making “Chulsoo” and “Younghee” visible once again in his works, Oh Sukkuhn might be questioning us what the individual memory actually is or whether the memory not only stays in each of us but also prevail beyond in the nation perhaps. Works of insightful question and skepsis from the viewpoint of present-day Korean artist give us the moment to think over the derivation of our memories."

"I wanted to collect our memories to create a new textbook that tells about our pain, [which stems] from identity confusion, while being depicted against dismal backgrounds. [I also wanted to explore the] individual’s sacrifice; needed for rapid economic growth in Korea. At that time it was considered that social values were more important than an individual’s existence. [...]

We may not exactly decipher their actions or feelings, but we can remember parallel moments in our own lives of hurt, embarrassment, shame, or other mortifications."

Details below.

From The Text Book (Chulsoo and Younghee) by Oh Sukkuhn - click to enlarge